Do we really love others? (Yagyavalkya's explanation)

Once maitreyi asked Yagyavalkya "You want to take sannyas(renunciate) and leave all worldly pleasures because they hinder your strive to immortality, but is love of me and kattayeni is also a bondage that you want to leave?"

Then Yagyavalkya replied "Husband is dear to wife not because she loves him or wife is not dear to husband because he loves her, they are dear because they love themselves. Human loves everything that gives him happiness. He does not love something that gives pain. Human wants wealth not because he loves wealth but because wealth can make his living easier."

"I love myself so I love whatever can give me happiness. I love myself thus my nature is bliss(ananda). This soul(atma) is bliss. That's why I want to renunciate. I am going beyond happiness and non-happiness.Now my sole purpose is to understand soul. This soul is only able to see, hear and meditate."

This was conversation between yagyavalkya and his wife maitreyi when Yagyavalkya expressed his desire to take sannyas.I wrote it here so that I could let readers know that we only love ourselves and none others. So trying to say 'you should love me because i love you' or trying to claim love is futile exercise. We just need to realise our love is for us only and no other. :D

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Do you know how to quench your thirst?

Once there was a big drought on land. There was a guy who used to live nearby an ocean of freshwater, It turned out that he was the only survivor there. One day, he was very thirsty and went near the ocean to drink water. He found a pot and then an idea came to his mind, I will store water for future, so that I won't have to travel the distance for water so frequently.
He dipped the pot into water and pulled back, the pot had holes and water was leaking continuously. He quickly ran to his house to store it in tank. Hardly a drop fell down. He felt very happy with his achievement, he went back to ocean and again brought water. The process continued, boy just collected water, he did not put even a drop of water in his mouth and eventually he died of thirst and his dream of filling the tank remained incomplete.
And then there was a big rainfall and the rainwater swept his body to the ocean.

Is this story related to our lifestyle? Don't we try to plan our future based on present scenarios which may or may not exist as it is till the time we have planned for arrives! We try to collect, happiness, wealth but by nature they can't be hold for long time. They are like leaking water from the pot. Even when we are in front of ocean we don't drink water, isn't this like having wealth and not using it but we love to store that for future use. We don't even know where all those earnings are spent and our savings are very little. In the process actuall happiness is lost, only the dream of better future remains. But our life has no guarantee and anytime it may finish. The dreams remain incomplete. Then what happens with our wealth? It's all swept!

Conclusion: Quenching the thirst is very important before storing water. Being happy now is very important before trying to build happiness and luxury for future!

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How to enjoy your work?

On a certain day, three men were working in one place. Another man came by and asked the first man, “What are you doing here?” The man looked up and said, “Are you blind? Can’t you see I’m cutting stone?” This person moved on to the next man and asked, “What are you doing here?” That man looked up and said, “Something to fill my belly. So I come here and do whatever they ask me to do. I just have to fill my belly, that’s all.” He went to the third man and asked, “What are you doing here?” That man stood up in great joy and said, “I’m building a beautiful temple here!” All of them were doing the same thing, but their experience of what they were doing was worlds apart.

Every human being, every moment of his life could be doing whatever he is doing in any one of these three contexts – and that will determine the quality of his life, not what he is actually doing. How simple or complex an activity is doesn’t change the quality of your life. With what context you do it changes the quality of your life.

They all are doing same thing yet their state of mind is different. People may not have choice in the varieties of work they can do but everyone has a choice in life to do their work in either of these three states of mind. Wouldn't it be better if you just start doing things in pleasant state of mind rather than whining about it!

So next time you hate your office work, or your studies, you can remember this simple thing. Changing the context can make your life a lot easier.

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Is this world an illusion?

Suppose you are hungry and you see stone, how do you feel? Do you feel anything about stone?
Suppose you are angry and you see same stone, how do you feel? You don't see that stone as stone, you see that as a weapon. The weapon you want to hit someone with.
Suppose the same stone is inside temple, at the main place where you worship. How do you feel? Worship? you will probably put tika on that stone also.
Suppose an animal enters temple and sees the same stone, will it mean something for that animal to worship? But will you argue with that animal if that animal thinks you are stupid to worship stone. No! but if person from other religion says same thing then conflict will arise!

The stone which has no significance at first sight rises to a level where you worship it! Do you know what is the difference? Our eyes see stone, and we know it is nothing more than stone but we perceive that stone differently according to our own emotions.

When great saints said "this whole world and existence is illusion(maya)", they may not mean all existence is illusion. They probably mean, the world we are perceiving is illusionary. When we can see the stone as just stone regardless of any emotion/situation then we become free from maya.

How will our life be if we are not free from maya?
We will not feel like praying or visiting temple when we are happy, we may go on saying god doesn't exist. We will feel proud of whatever we are doing but if we fall in great misery we will be back to praying. No matter whom you pray, you will at least pray.
This is the nature of maya. You see things the way it is necessary for your survival. You won't be able to understand how another sees this world and misery will continue. The whole world is a misery if you are not free from maya.

But once you are free from maya, you will see Happiness as happiness, not mine or your happiness; Love as just love, not as mine, your, others love; Religion as religion, not as mine or others; Temple as temple, not as mine, his or others. This is also called opening of third eye.The third eye does not mean someone’s forehead cracked and something came out! It simply means another dimension of perception has opened up and that dimension of perception sees things as it is. Because the third eye is the eye of vision. The two physical eyes are just sensory organs.

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Root of every war is assumption

Suppose you are a science student and someone comes to you and says,"his grandfather painted the sky blue". What will you do? you will laugh at his ignorance.

Suppose someone else comes and says "it is blue because of reflection of ocean". You may now try to convince them that it is actually because of refraction of light. So at the same time another guy comes and says "you are talking rubbish, sky is not blue". Now what will happen, you will team up with two previous people and against this new person who says sky is not blue.

So, now starts the debate, which if is able to reach to any conclusion will end up with all four believing any of the assumptions above.

All 4 will say,

•  person no 1's grandfather painted it blue
• it is due to reflection of ocean
• it is due to refraction
• sky is not blue at all

But does that debate and conclusion takes them any closer to the truth? Truth is sky looks blue due to refraction and actually sky is not blue! Imagine if someone with this knowledge had been in between these previous 4 idiots, what would have happened? Either they all would have agreed with him or person 3 & 4 would have asked him to choose either side rather than talking 2 things at a time.

And then suppose they all agreed on the last person's statement and then next person comes and says that sky does not exist. Sky has no colour, and one that has no colour can not be seen and why should I believe on existence of such a thing that cannot be seen?

Leave the discussion, but do you realise what is happening in this story? They all have their own assumptions about sky. They go through the debate thinking they will find out the truth but they are only finding common assumptions until someone else has something opposite to say. Neither of them agree with each other from the beginning, but as they go on meeting with new thoughts they are uniting but the unity is against someone and his new assumption.

I wonder, is something similar happening with people who believe in religion or call themselves atheist or some other beliefs? Are they really worried about truth or are they just trying to argue based on their own belief. Won't there be peace if all of them realise that there is no point in discussing about sky. Can't I realise that I don't need to write a blog post like this about the sky?

Does whatever they believe really matter? Will sky lose it's existence if they don't believe it? So why is there war in this world? all because of the assumptions. And the very problem with assumption is that it unites only against another assumptions. Why can't everyone drop their assumptions and be in peace?

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SURRENDER-THE SECRET OF SUCCESS

Everyone wants to be succesful but the problem is not everyone knows key to success.What if I say “key to success is surrender”,any normal man will find it crazy.The reason behind this is surrender despite being most powerful tool of success remains the most misunderstood subject.

Surrender is not raising your hand in despair,it is waving your hand up in the air and saying hello to incoming success with a big smile on your face.

Everywhere surrender means giving up when things go beyond the limit you can handle.But how can one attain success if s/he gives up.If such questions arise in your mind then you are at the right place.Answers will be revealed as we go on reading further.

Before defining surrender we will obeserve how people live their whole life believing on either of these four things.

1.I can’t do anything 2.I can do something. 3.I can do anything 4.I can’t do anything.

Oh!!look at my list,looks like I have repeated 1 and 4 but the fun part here is I have done it on purpose so let’s look at each of these belief individually.

1.I can’t do anything:It is the way most people live their life.They try different things and can’t achieve success and say “I can’t do anything,I am really useless.”There are even more pitiful people in this category than this,they are the people who believe they are useless because others say”you can’t do it”.One thing to remember is noone knows you better than you,yourself.

2.I can do something:Movers and shakers of the world know they can do something in their life.They want to give something to this world,be something in their life.They achieve whatever they want but they are only at level 2 because they are satisfied with limited success.There is more of the thing they can do then they believe they can do.

3.I can do anything:Welcome to the world of columbus,the craziest way of living.No matter what the world says,what you believe is the ultimate truth.Anything is not undoable until you have tried it yourself.If you fall in this catagory then you are next colombus or next edmund hillary.

4.I can’t do anything:After living all previous level one reaches this level.The day he reaches level three he goes on trying anything and everything until the day no. of unsuccesful attempts overtake no. of successfull achievements.That day he may sit back and say I am useless and give up in frustration or choose to be the level 4 personality by realising everything is not in our control.There is some special power above us governing our fate.If you are religious that special power is god and if you are an atheist ,that power is just supreme energy.This is not the end of belief that things can be done but a way of going further than giving up your efforts.

Once you believe there are things beyond your capacity,you gain a new hope that the thing can be done with a little bit of extra help from the unknown power.This makes your belief that ‘something can be done’ even strong.This always keeps you in position where nothing is undoable,and when there is nothing that you cannot do,success will not be something you want,it will be your very nature or may be i should say success is your very nature,maybe you just need to realise the fact.

Hmm now post is about to end but did I really defined surrender!!

Surrender is never to be defined and taught, it is to be lived,when are you starting to surrender all your problems and start living happy?

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Types of Prana

Dear Gurudev, you said there are different types of prana, could you please talk a little bit more about that?

Sri Sri : There are ten types of Prana (the subtle life force energy). Of these, there are five major and five minor kinds of Prana. Today let me just talk about the five major types of Prana.

The first major type of Prana is called Prana which arises from your navel upwards to the top of the head.

Then there is another type of Prana that goes downwards from the navel, and it is called Apana.

When the Prana level is too high, you cannot sleep; you can get insomnia and you feel very jittery. However, if the Apana level is too high, you feel so dull that you do not even want to get off the bed.

Have you had this experience? Sometimes you feel so heavy, gross, and dull. This is due to the imbalance of Apana.

The third type of Prana is Samana which is present as the digestive fire in the digestive system, i.e., in the stomach. It is the agni or the fire that helps digest the food.

Samana is that which helps indigestion, and it also helps other bodily systems. It helps in balancing the system.

Then there is Udana Vayu or Udana Prana which is somewhere near the heart region and is responsible for emotions.

In Sudarshan Kriya, people cry or they laugh, and you find that all these emotions well up. This is due to the Udana Vayu. So this Udana Vayu is responsible for all the emotions.

Then the fifth type of Prana called Vyana which is responsible for all the movement in the body. It is spread all over the body.

In Sudarshan Kriya, you feel some tingling, some energy all over the body. Have you all experienced this?

What happens in Sudarshan Kriya is, all the five Pranas get balanced, and that is why you cry, or you laugh, and you feel a tingling all over the body. That is the specialty of Sudarshan Kriya.

You also tend to feel very hungry after the Kriya, is it not so?

So, these five Prana in the body run our lives.

If Samana is imbalanced, then it gives rise to digestive problems, and you cannot digest the food properly, or you may experience nausea. All this happens because of an imbalance of the Samana Prana.

When Udana Prana is stuck, you feel an emotional block that also affects your thinking and your mind.

When the Vyana which is all over the body is imbalanced, then you have joint pain, or movement trouble, and either you become too jittery and restless, or you may feel like you do not want to do anything.

Moving around anywhere in such a state gives discomfort and creates restlessness in the body. All this is caused by the Vyana imbalance.

Be passionate about knowledge, be passionate about doing service, be passionate about thinking; or about anything. Some passion definitely needs to be there in life. You can have a passion for wisdom as well.

After Sudarshan Kriya, you would have noticed that all these imbalances go away. Has this not happened to all of you?

All earlier discomfort in the movements of the body, or its circulation, or some pains due to Vyana imbalance, all disappeared after Sudarshan Kriya.

So these are the five different Pranas.

There are five other sub-ordinate Pranas as well, but that we will discuss that another time.

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Stress elimination

I recall my attempt to talk on the topic "deepen your root and broaden your vision" where I was talking about why we should learn new things but without leaving our religion and culture.

During the event, I was asked about the slogan of Art of living, where it is said stress free and violence free society is the goal. I could not prove by example that stress could be eliminated. Frankly speaking, at that time I didn't even know meaning of stress but i could tell through my experience that after I started meditating, I had eliminated my stress. But putting experience into speech is a tough job.

Today let's start with the defination of stress. Stress is the difference between reality and your expectation. For example, i have a ticket of a movie of 9 am and i am stuck in traffic jam at the distance of 15 minute by vehicle, I will have 2 options: I can have stress, I can feel bad about the portion I will miss, I can curse traffic system, politicians, government, regret for not leaving early and so on.

Or I can say to myself, ok anyhow some portion is going to be missed so instead of being stressed, i will go and watch the show and then again i will see the missed part online or maybe i don't want to go today, i will buy another ticket and watch the whole movie in the hall.

So stress is a choice and not a phenomenon, and i wonder why do people choose this disease causing thing. We all know stress causes heart disease, asthma and even cancer. For reference you can see the video on the RHS :P

Ok now let's see how just by changing the thinking perception can change the effect of stress, and is it just illusion of stress elimination or is it really possible? 

Do you know a chemical named Oxytocin. It is a chemical released when we hug or kiss loved ones. And surprisingly it is released as a cause of stress! But this chemical has all the positive effects in our body.

So who is the villain in stress! Our villain is named as adrenaline. This hormone is produced in stress, when we fear something. Our day to day life stress is releasing this hormone and this hormone shows symptoms like faster beating of heart and other effects which may eventually cause diseases that sound extremely dangerous. So the trick of stress elimination is letting our body produce oxytocin instead of adrenaline. The thing I am saying is not complete as there are various other factors associated with stress, but I can pretty much say that the stress we have been knowing and think as unavoidable can actually be eliminated. That feeling we don't like can be eliminated and diseases can be avoided.

Oxytocin sometimes is also called bonding hormone and it is also said to be released when we help others. So helping others can also reduce the stress we know. Please watch this beautiful video below to know more in this regard.

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